越簡單越難的白糖糕 (Chinese Sugar Steam Cake)

At 3:30am, I officially declare that my second trial of this old time goodie, sugar steam cake, has come to a bad ending. I failed....again....

I can still remember back in the old days, my mom would occasionally buy me this simple sugar steam cake (or in direct translation: white sugar cake). It's sweet, a bit chewy, and very clean profiled sweet snack. Some dessert leave you with a mouth full of flavors, and yet this is not one of those. After the bite, your mouth really have nothing left behind, not even a bit that's stuck in between teeth (unless you have bad teeth, that'd be a different story), and it's as if you never ate it. Then you wanted more, because you really like the flavor, and you keep on eating; before long, it's all gone. To make things even trickier, it's sold by piece, so we generally won't have much to start with.

I saw the recipe online, couple weeks ago, and that got me really excited. After coming to the States, I have not eaten this old styled Cantonese delight for many years. All that nice flavors, that almost never left a trait in my mouth, the good memory came back, and I immediately decided to make some.

You would think, such a simple snack would be easy to make. Afterall, it only calls for rice flour, sugar, water, yeast, and a little bit of oil. Boy, I was wrong...VERY WRONG!! My first trial was a complete disaster. The yeast was unable to do its magic, even though they were perfectly happy and bubbly before they were added. As a result, the cake did not have the airy texture, it was dense like a brick. Also because the yeast was all trapped with no work being done, the cake tastes very sour and yeasty, kinda reminds me of the food turned spoiled. That, I took a bite, spit it out, and the rest went straight to the garbage can, even without its mug shot. =(

As I read more about it, I realized some of my mistakes, so I gave it another try. This time, I got the texture right, hence the picture that's shown above.But the taste....it's still missing...it doesn't have that clean flavor that I'm looking for. So, now my second trial is declared as a failure as well, only this time at least I got half of it right.

I guess, sometimes the simplest, is the hardest to achieve.



凌晨3點30分，我終於意識到我的第二次嘗試白糖糕終告失敗。

小時候媽媽有時候會買給我吃。白白的一塊糕，簡簡單單的，就像它的賣相一樣樸實，很爽口很彈牙，香香甜甜的；而且吃完了以後感覺跟沒吃過似的，總想再吃一塊。

前一陣子看到網上有白糖糕的食譜，老實說，很簡單，材料就只有米粉、白糖、水、酵母跟油而已。想說那多容易啊，沒兩天就跑去買了米粉回家開工。沒想到，越簡單的食物越是門道大；這個白糖糕我做了兩次還愣是沒做成功。第一次做的時候發現酵母罷工，根本沒有發起來，也就沒有那些氣孔了。咬咬牙還是把它蒸了，沒想到咬下去一口，發現有股酸味，感覺餿餿的，立馬我就把它給吐了，東西也直接丟到了垃圾桶裡，連個照片都沒照。總結經驗覺得應該是米糊煮得太稠了，趕緊從頭來過再接再勵。這一次，終於把這個質感給弄對了﹝見照片﹞，讓我心一喜，找來一把刀切了一小塊來嚐嚐。

甜裡帶了些酸...還是味道不對。雖說沒有第一次那麼嚴重的失敗...可是很不幸，這次還是失敗了...

唉...只好繼續革命了....